The efficiency of a light-emitting diode (LED) is limited by a number of factors that constitute recurring challenges for LED device engineers. Among them, generated light can be absorbed by the layers of semiconductor material that constitute the LED, and it can be occluded by the electrodes that are required to bring activation current to the active region of the device.
Silicon carbide (SiC) with relatively low resistance (i.e., highly doped) has been commonly used as a conductive substrate material for high brightness LEDs in the blue, green, and near-ultraviolet spectral range. For LEDs in this spectral range, Gallium nitride (GaN) has been used as a basic light-emitting material. GaN-based LED structures are normally grown on the substrate, layer by layer, through vapor deposition processing, which is generally a metal-organic chemical vapor deposition process (MOCVD).
FIG. 1 depicts a schematic diagram of a conventional LED device 10, or an LED chip, built on a substantially conductive SiC substrate 20. Two electrodes 21, 22, serving as ohmic contacts, are disposed at opposite sides of the substrate 20. One of the electrodes 21, which is referred to herein as the top electrode 21, is positioned at the side of the substrate 20 upon which the LED is built (i.e., the MOCVD or epitaxial layer side). The other electrode 22 is referred to herein as the bottom electrode 22 and is positioned at the side of the substrate 20 opposite the epitaxial layer side. A buffer layer 23 is disposed on the SiC substrate 20, and a light-emitting structure 24 is disposed on the buffer layer. The light-emitting structure 24 includes an active region 26 flanked by an n-type cladding layer 25 and a p-type cladding layer 27.
There are performance issues associated with this device design. To grow high quality GaN material on SiC substrate a 3% lattice mismatch needs to be considered. Lattice mismatches induce strain in the crystal structure that leads to performance limiting crystal structure defects or degrades electronic device reliability.
Usually, an aluminum nitride (AlN) layer with only 1% lattice mismatch to the SiC is used as a transition layer between SiC and GaN. Since AlN is highly resistive, LEDs made with an AlN transition layer exhibit very high forward voltage that results in high power consumption and low efficiency.
In order to reduce the resistivity of the transition layer, an aluminum-gallium-nitride (AlGaN) layer can be employed. AlGaN can be doped n-type and create much higher conductivity than AlN. However, since the lattice mismatch issue must be addressed, the AlGaN compound used still requires a high aluminum (Al) composition. This results in a limited improvement of the forward voltage.
A second issue is that in order to form a low resistance current flow path from the top electrode to the bottom electrode during device operation, the SiC substrate is required to be highly doped. When the substrate is highly doped the SiC becomes more absorptive of light energy, especially in the blue-green and near-ultraviolet range light, with a wavelength of about 400-550 nm, which reduces the substrate's efficiency as a light transmitter. A compromise between light output and the forward voltage is therefore unavoidable. Therefore, what is needed is an LED architecture that provides for improved light output.